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Health Symposium
July 27-29, Centro de Transferencia de Tecnología del LANAMME. Info: 2511-3050, 2511-3227, inisa.ucr.ac.cr.

Theater at Noon
UCR Experimental Music Group, July 27, both at 12:10 p.m., National Theater.

Mutemusic Exhibit
By the photographer J. Ignacio González, through July 28, Mexico Institute, 250 m. south of Subaru, Los Yoses.

“El Ogrito”
Play performed by Grupo Sin Telón, July 27, 7 p.m., Spanish Cultural Center.

A couple from the United States suspected of killing at least two people in Panama was arrested on Monday morning by Nicaraguan officials on the Río San Juan in Nicaragua, after crossing from Costa Rica.

The suspected killers, William “Wild Bill” Adolfo Cortez and his wife Jena Seana, fled Panama last week after authorities there unearthed two dead bodies on a property that the couple owned. The two are also suspected in the disappearance of at least one other person in Panama.

According to Costa Rican security officials, the suspects murdered the victims in order to seize their property.

They are wanted by the Panamanian Investigation Police, while Interpol and the FBI have also backed the search.

The Nicaraguan army has detained both suspects at a military post on the Río San Juan in Boca de Sarapiquí, near Tambor, where couple docked on Monday morning.

Cortez and Seana entered Costa Rica from Panama near the Caribbean coast late last week, Costa Rican officials said. They drove to Santa Cruz de Turrialba, a mountain village east of San José, and abandoned their car on a local's property there on Saturday night.

Around noon on Sunday, the couple arrived in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, a town in north-central Costa Rica, where they spent the night in a small cabin. On Monday morning, the two rented a small motor boat to travel up the Río Sarapiquí to Barra del Colorado, a Caribbean coast village and sportfishing destination in Costa Rica's northeast corner.

When the driver and owner of the boat steered toward a National Police checkpoint near the convergence of the Río Sarapiquí and the Río San Juan, Cortez threw him overboard and sped the boat toward Tambor.

There, the couple was detained by the Nicaraguan army and they surrendered without resistance.

A team of Costa Rican police have located the boat owner and are holding him as a witness in the case. In an interview with Channel 7 on Monday, the boat owner said that the couple was not traveling with anyone else.

Jorge Rojas, the director of the Costa Rican Judicial Police, is speaking with Panamanian and Nicaraguan officials to determine how to prosecute the two U.S. citizens. A group of Costa Rican National Police officers have been stationed near the border with Nicaragua to help communicate any messages regarding the pair.

Since the couple is wanted by Interpol and the Panamanian Authorities, they will likely be deported to Panama to face charges there.

Costa Rica's vice minister of Security, Jorge Chavarría, said that as of Monday, the only crime that the couple had committed in Costa Rica was boat theft. He said Costa Rica will likely pursue these charges, but not until the Panamanian authorities are through with the U.S. expatriates.

A United States labor union has filed a complaint on behalf of dockworkers in Limón accusing the Costa Rican government of “serious noncompliance on repeated occasions with the labor laws of Costa Rica.”

The 18-page document was presented last Wednesday to the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Trade and Labor Affairs (OTLA). It alleges that the Costa Rican government launched a campaign to discredit the unions, removed democratically-elected union leaders and froze their bank accounts, and ramped up the police presence to ensure a smooth transition to port privatization.

“People from the United States believe Costa Rica is a paradise,” said Robert McEllrath, international president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), who filed the complaint along with Costa Rica's National Association of Public and Private Workers and the Workers Union of the Atlantic Port Authority (JAPDEVA).

“But Costa Rica has been transformed into a country in which the police break down windows and doors of areas in which workers are assembling in peace, in which the government disperses propaganda to put down union elections and in which the social welfare of the workers and their families are relegated to second place behind the gains of transnational companies,” he continued.

Conflicts between workers groups and the central government have arisen in response to a privatization effort whereby management of the nation's major ports is being removed from the hands of the government and placed under the management of private companies. According to former President Oscar Arias, this move should make the ports more efficient and ultimately bring more commerce to Costa Rica.

Earlier this year, serious disputes arose between the government and unions over a plan to privative the Atlantic ports of Limón and Moín.

McEllrath said that when Costa Rica underwent the same privatization process at the Pacific port of Caldera, 90 percent of workers lost their jobs. Those who still have their jobs received a two-thirds pay cut.

“They are still suffering enormous consequences,” McEllrath said.

Former Costa Rican minister to the president Rodrigo Arias claimed that of the 900 workers who lost their jobs, 700 found new ones.

The San Francisco-based International Longshore and Warehouse Union represents 25,000 dockworkers on the Pacific coast of the United States.

Former president and 2011 presidential hopeful Arnoldo Alemán claims he survived an ambush by “Sandinista assassins” on July 25 in the rural municipality of San Miguelito, in the southern department of Río San Juan near the Costa Rican border.

“The cowardly assassins almost killed my 9-year-old daughter Andrea Fernanda, but thank God they only managed to break the back side window of the vehicle that she was traveling in along with my wife and family,” Alemán said in a Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) press release. “God is protecting us and protecting Nicaragua.”

According to a party statement, the PLC campaign caravan, which included Alemán's family, local mayors and party officials, was ambushed by a group of masked men carrying red and black Sandinista flags. The statement says the masked men blocked the road with burning tires and attacked the PLC caravan, forcing it to retreat back to the center of town.

Party spokesman Leonel Teller said in a release that Alemán, with the help of police officials and ex-contra combatants who came to his defense, was eventually able to escape town and slip past the Sandinista mob without further incident. Three PLC officials were allegedly injured and most of the vehicles were damaged in the altercation, according to the PLC.

Alemán likened the ambush to a similar Sandinista attack on a PLC caravan in 1996, in which one person was killed and others were injured after taking fire from an AK-47.

“We want the democratic people of Nicaragua to know that we will not be terrorized,” said Alemán, adding that his campaign will continue to the “far corners of the country to bring the message of hope and of triumph to defeat the dictator and his party.”

Alemán declared his candidacy on July 11 and has since been campaigning in rural parts of the country. He was expected to have spent last night in the remote southern Caribbean river town of Greytown.

The ruling Sandinista Front has not commented on the allegations. The Nica Times was unable to get in touch with National Police spokeswoman Vilma Reyes to get the police's side of the story.